Samuel L. Mitchill

Samuel Latham Mitchill (20 August 1764-7 September 1831) was a member of the US House of Representatives (DR-NY 2) from 4 March 1801 to 3 March 1803 (succeeding Edward Livingston and preceding Joshua Sands), from NY 3 from 3 March 1803 to 22 November 1804 (succeeding Philip Van Cortlandt and preceding George Clinton, Jr.), and from NY 2 from 1810 to 3 March 1813 (succeeding William Denning and preceding Jotham Post, Jr.). He was also a US Senator from New York from 23 November 1804 to 4 March 1809 (succeeding John Armstrong, Jr. and preceding Obadiah German).

Biography
Samuel Latham Mitchill was born in Hempstead, New York in 1764, and he attended medical school in Scotland before returning to the United States. As a lawyer, he oversaw the purchase of lands in western New York from the Iroquois Native Americans in 1788. He then taught at Columbia College from 1792 to 1801 and was a founding member of The Medical Repository. Mitchill became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1797, taught at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York from 1807 to 1826, and organized the short-lived Rutgers Medical College.

Mitchill was a Democratic-Republican Party politician, and he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1791 and again in 1798. From 1801 to 1804, he served in the US House of Representatives, and he then served as a US Senator from 1804 to 1809, returning to the House from 1810 to 1813. He strongly endorsed the building of the Erie Canal, a project championed by his friend, DeWitt Clinton, and he was known to be a living encyclopedia, with Thomas Jefferson calling him "the Congressional Dictionary". He died in New York City in 1831 at the age of 67, and Mount Mitchill in New Jersey is named after him, honoring his surveying of the Navesink Highlands.